Kitten owners, don't make the same mistake I did

This is my baby Ollie. He's the first pet I adopted as a young adult. The moment I went to the shelter to find my first pet and I saw him I knew he was the only kitten I wanted. He was a healthy and happy cat until one day he began throwing up everywhere and eventually just stopped moving. It was at this point I knew I needed to get him to an emergency vet. They did blood tests and x rays and found something lodged inside his stomach and intestines. It was some sort of hard mass.
They told me they needed to do an emergency surgery or he would die. In fact, they also said he could die during surgery too. I was distraught. I cried and cried because the surgery about $4,000 and even if he had the surgery he could still die. I didn't have this kind of money as a broke college student. I asked my family for money, but they couldn't help. The vet told me about Care Credit so I immediately signed up and was approved. Ollie went into his surgery.

This is what they found in his stomach and intestines. Fucking hair ties, my hair ties! He ate so many of them that they got lodged into his intestines and suffocated part of it so they had to cut the dead intestines and sew together the ends. He did survive his surgery thank goodness.
When they showed me this bag of hair ties I wanted to hit myself. I felt so horrible for my ignorance. I would see him chewing up my hair ties and I would try to stop him, but I did not see or know he was actually swallowing them. I did not know the severity of the situation. The vet told me it's common for kittens and young cats to swallow weird things like hair ties or string. They said they once did surgery on a cat who swallowed an entire balls worth of yarn. I did not know cats did this and my cat paid dearly for my ignorance. I wanted to tell this story because I'm not sure if other people know this about cats. Ollie almost died. I don't want this to happen to other cats and cat owners. NEVER LET YOUR CAT CHEW ON ANYTHING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. THEY LOVE TO SWALLOW WEIRD SHIT

Here is my boy post surgery sleeping in my arms and happy to be alive.

Ollie is alive and well! After his surgery, it was like he knew his life had been on the line because he started sleeping in my arms every night and he started acting more as a big brother to our foster cat, Finn, pictured above.
I hope this story was informative to some and helpful to others. I learned the hard way, but now I try to tell all cat owners I know so it doesn't happen to others.